This Bitter Life
by BeautifulBabes
Summary: Life does not turn out as Harry expects it too. warning: bad language and abuse themes


This Bitter Life

By Beautiful Babes

Summary: Life never turns out as you expect it too. Harry Potter learns this all too well. Warning abuse themes

The blood-soaked oak floor would not get clean no matter how hard Harry Potter scrubbed. He was getting frustrated. He wanted to throw the towel in. He wanted to jump up and down and have a hissy fit. What would be the point? If he did any of those things, he would barely live to see another day. Incurring the wrath of his uncle would be detrimental to his health. Harry continued on his hands and knees scrubbing away. His hands were beginning to blister and bleed but he would not stop, for stopping would mean he would be giving up and giving up means that _they _win. Something that would not do!

Harry had hated his life for a while, but now he just couldn't get the muster up to care. Why? Nobody else cared about him, so why should he? Harry remembered when he was a kid he used to be happy. Happy, what a foreign concept, he hadn't been happy ever since his freakiness started showing. Why one might ask? Simple, his relatives hated magic. Since he could do magic, they hated him by proxy. Harry has long ago given up on trying and making his family love him. One can make only so many dinners, give so many hugs and kisses and do everything perfectly for so long before they give up. Rather, something inside of them dies like a decaying corpse. One day they care and the next they don't, for what is the point? Harry knew logically that a teenager of his years shouldn't be so down, but instead revel in their youth. Harry could care less, all those revelling youths have loving families and friends. He did not. Life was a bitch. It fools you for sometime before it comes up and bitch slaps you.

Harry loved children. Simple reason, they have innocence that everybody else has long since lost. They believed in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and other magical creatures. They believed everybody was the same. They had purity. Harry knew he had long ago lost his purity, and that was alright with him. If he still had his purity he would be living in a world of make believes and that everything was a-okay. It is not.

Adults or jaded teenagers like Harry knew the world was going to hell in a hand basket. That there were _parents _who used their children as punching bags, things to be used and thrown away, outlets for their emotional lashings, play toys for their sick and twisted minds and on and on. Harry knew this all too well. Adults also knew people enjoyed hurting other people for fun. They knew the world was not all sunshine and roses; it is a world and blacks, greys and reds. Harry had wished he did not know this when he cared.

Eleven year old Harry was still naive enough to believe that someone at Hogwarts would help him. No. Just like the muggle world they ignored it like someone ignores bad BO. When he was little he had gone to the local priest, Father Riley Patrick for help. The _good _Father rushed to the Dursley's and told them everything he had said. What a load of crock. He couldn't walk straight for a month. After that Harry kept silent, enduring the slaps, pushes down the stairs, locking outdoors because who would help him? Then Hogwarts came. He told the Headmaster, because if someone could help it would be him, right? Wrong. The Headmaster said he was a little lying twit who should stay in his place and then put on his grandfatherly mask and sent Harry on his way. Harry knew then he would not tell another soul again. He would suffer it in silence, like so many others in the world. For no one would help him. Why would they want to help a freak like him?

One summer Harry met her. She looked gorgeous and looked like she had a good home life. It was the summer he was forced to get a job to earn his keep (_oh the irony) _and he met her at his job. He was envious the whole summer that she had this perfect life whilst he did not. Until that day. The day that will remain burned into his memory forever. The day he found out nobody has a perfect life.

She had walked into work limping. Everyone asked her what happened. Her excuse? Fell down the stairs. Logical right, one could? But Harry saw her eyes when she said that and he knew. They held the same deadness that his eyes held when he thought of what happened to him. He knew right then and there someone helped her fall down the stairs. Harry didn't know what to day. Well, what could someone say? Hi, I'm your co worker who also happens to be used as a human toy? Right, sure. People don't go around saying things like that. Not in polite company anyways. Why? Because abuse isn't talked about, it's shoved into a deep corner like your drunken Uncle Albert no one wants to talk about.

Somehow though, she knew too. Perhaps it was the day he came into work with a large black eye. She didn't say anything though and simply handed him a cool compress. They went back to work. Nobody saying anything as if nothing happened. The next summer Harry was sorry he didn't say anything about her to someone. For she committed suicide because she believed life was no longer worth living and she could see no end to the darkness. She was only seventeen, one more year and she would have been free. It was that summer Harry made himself a promise, no matter how bad life got and much he wished he wasn't alive he wouldn't kill himself and give _them _the satisfaction.

Ron and Hermione, if one couldn't trust them who could they trust? They were supposed to be his best friends and they were disgusted by him. By his story to tell. Didn't believe him at first. Didn't want to believe him, why? Because everyone wants to believe the best in parents and families. Harry was crushed that they were disgusted with him. Disgusted that he could make up such a story. If Harry hadn't made himself that promise he probably would've jumped off the owlery tower.

Do you know how it feels to feel like nothing matter? It just happens. One day you still feel something; hurt, anger, shame, humiliation anything. Then the next day it changes. For everybody who feels like that experiences it differently. For one it could be their supposed mother yelling at them that they are the "demon child and no child of mine, and where the hell are you going?" which on any other day would make them cry a bucket load and scream in protest "Well, I am yours so suck it up!"- Or something to that effect. But on that day all it makes them feel is something breaking inside of them. Like a part of them has finally died. Then they'll stomp to where their car keys are all the while their tormentor yelling at them "What the Fuck do you think you are doing?" and ignoring said tormentor and walked out of the house and drive away. All the while feeling as if something was missing, something vital. For Harry, it was a common occurrence. Weeding the garden, and being screeched at for doing it wrong and the final piece of their resistance is gone. No child should ever feel that, or ever for that matter have to live those horrors.

Hope is what kept Harry and many others in his position going. Hope that somebody claiming to be their relative or the cops comes and sweep them away. That hope dies every year little by little, with little events by little events until there is nothing left. Harry knew that feeling of hope once. He could still remember it's sweet embrace and the feeling of having hope. Even though he could still remember it, he could not bring it up. Could not be hopeful, how could one be?

But, the most unsuspecting people surprise you. For Harry it was Severus and Draco. Harry had always thought they hated him. Hated his guts just like his family, for who wouldn't? Turns out, they didn't. Severus had suspected for a long time something untoward was happening. Something wrong, even if it was the blasted boy who lived, he just couldn't put his finger on it. Until it finally slapped him in the face in potions class. He had always thought that Potter was arrogant like his father. Thought he lived the world in his high luxury. Until he saw firsthand that it wasn't so. Harry Potter was afraid of being alone. He was afraid of having no one to care for him. He was afraid that if he was alone _they _would win. How did he figure it out? When the Weasel and Mudblood abandoned him and he looked frightened of sitting alone and was begging anyone and everyone to sit with him. Draco knew when he saw Potter's eyes. They were dead. He invited him to sit at his table with him and Pansy. He knew.

They would not leave him alone after that, no matter how much he protested that he didn't need babysitters. Slowly but surely that saved him.

They saved him from himself and his tormenters. They showed him that life was worth living and that they are people out there who do care about others. They showed him that the world may beat you down but just get right back on that horse and keep riding. They showed him that life wasn't about the big things but the little things. To enjoy the little things for they help you through the horrid things like abusive families.

They were his guardian angels when he thought he had none.

Abuse is a horrible thing that many are silently living through. Don't shove it into a closet. Try to help them by showing them that it is okay to tell others and get help.


End file.
